Volume 2. Small quarto, red cloth, 1972, 696 pages in Very Good book in a Very Good Dust Jacket. Minor soil to exterior; previous owners signature inside front cover, otherwise text clean / unmarked. Dust jacket now protected in mylar sleeve.

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Bibliographic Details

Title

SCIENCE AND CIVILISATION IN CHINA. VOL. 2: HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT

Publisher

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Publication Date

1972

Language

English

ISBN 10

0521058007

ISBN 13

9780521058001

Binding

Cloth

Condition

Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition

Very Good

Seller catalogs

Science

About this title

Synopsis

The second volume of Dr Joseph Needham's great work Science and Civilisation in China is devoted to the history of scientific thought. Beginning with ancient times, it describes the Confucian milieu in which arose the organic naturalism of the great Taoist school, the scientific philosophy of the Mohists and Logicians, and the quantitative materialism of the Legalists. Thus we are brought on to the fundamental ideas which dominated scientific thinking in the Chinese middle ages. The author opens his discussion by considering the remote and pictographic origins of words fundamental in scientific discourse, and then sets forth the influential doctrines of the Two Forces and the Five Elements. Subsequently he writes of the important sceptical tradition, the effects of Buddhist thought, and the Neo-Confucian climax of Chinese naturalism. Last comes a discussion of the conception of Laws of Nature in China and the West.

Review

"[An] astonishing and enduring study...[Needham brings] depth of emotion and technical finesse to his task."
Jonathan Spence, New York Review of Books

"Perhaps the greatest single act of historical synthesis and intercultural communication ever attempted by one man."
Laurence Picken, Cambridge University

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Frey Fine Books
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